Correction: Roeland Park residents will be charged an annual $9.15 fee, or about $0.76 per month, for curbside glass recycling. An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that residents would be charged $2.50 per month for the service.
In a 5-4 vote earlier this week, the Roeland Park City Council approved an agreement with Ripple Glass to provide curbside glass recycling services to most residences in the city.
- The program approved at Monday’s council meeting will cover all the city’s single-family homes, along with the Boulevard apartments at 4800 Skyline Drive, the community center and R and Nall Parks.
When does it start? The city’s contract with Kansas City-based Ripple Glass will start in January 2023 and is scheduled to end in December 2025.
- The city conducted a curbside glass recycling pilot program from October 2021 to this past March in which Ripple collected glass curbside at more than 650 residences in Roeland Park.
For single-family homeowners: Ripple Glass containers and informational flyers will be delivered to Roeland Park’s almost 3,000 single family homes the week of Jan. 1, 2023.
- Each home will get a 14-gallon container by default, but some homes may be eligible for house-side collection or wheeled 35-gallon carts.
- Curbside pickup will occur once a month and correspond with the city’s regular solid waste collection schedule.
For the Boulevard Apartments: Eight 64-gallon carts will be delivered the first week of January 2023 to the Boulevard Apartments.
- Glass recycling will be collected bi-weekly at the apartments.
- Ripple will give residents bags made of recycled plastic to carry glass to the bins, and the bags will have a graphic that shows users what items to recycle.
In city parks: Glass at the Roeland Park Community Center, R Park and Nall Park will be collected once monthly on a service day, free of charge.
- Ripple will also provide glass recycling services and containers for city-sponsored events.
What will it cost? According to the deal approved Monday, Ripple Glass will charge the city $2.50 per household to do the curbside glass recycling program, a projected annual cost to the city of $85,530.
- About 30% of the program will be paid for through the city’s annual solid waste assessment, and the rest will be covered by the city’s general fund.
- In a follow-up email, assistant city administrator Erin Winn said residents can expect to see a $9.15 annual fee on their solid waste assessment to cover the curbside glass recycling, which translates to about an extra 76 cents per month.
- The added curbside glass recycling fee will bring residents’ annual solid waste assessment to $214.15.
- All residents will be charged the fee regardless of whether they participate in curbside glass recycling or not.
How they voted: In July, the city council voted 6-1 to create a draft agreement with Ripple Glass, but on Monday, the glass recycling program split councilmembers.
- Councilmembers Jan Faidley, Jen Hill, Michael Poppa and Michael Rebne voted in favor of the agreement.
- Councilmembers Tom Madigan, Benjamin Dickens, Kate Raglow and Trisha Brauer voted against the measure.
- Mayor Mike Kelly broke the tie in favor of the agreement.
What they’re saying: Madigan, who has voiced opposition to the curbside glass recycling program from the beginning stages of discussion, voiced worries about inflation.
- He said now isn’t the time to increase prices for residents by implementing curbside glass recycling, and expressed concerns of carbon dioxide emissions from Ripple Glass trucks.
- “We can’t keep using a car salesman’s tactics, using the approach of justifying an increase of our taxes by saying, ‘it only costs this much money,’” he said.
- Raglow agreed: “I personally don’t think now is the time for us to be doing this, although I do fully support any type of recycling and personally would love this for myself and my household. I’ve received more emails asking us to not to vote in favor of this than I actually did for our masking ordinance which I was actually kind of surprised by.”
In support: Supporters of the measure see it differently though. They think citywide glass recycling is long overdue.
- “We should have figured out recycling glass a long long time ago. This is something that should have been figured out in the 50s, 60s and 70s,” said Councilman Rebne. “The fact that we’re struggling now to figure out a good contract to make it happen, you know, is more a testament of just our delay in dealing with this until now.”
- Mayor Kelly, who is running for Johnson County chair this November, said the measure could save the city and residents money in the future, when they renegotiate the solid waste management agreement next year.
- “Depending on the amount of weight that we take out of the landfills, and we can use specific data from Ripple Glass to be able to show what is taken out, we stand to be in a better position to re-negotiate that fee as well,” he said.
